TikTok to pay UK fine over under-13s
TikTok drops appeal against £12.7m fine for not keeping under-13s off platform
Friday, 25 September 2026
Warm-up
- How do social media platforms check a user’s age?
- What risks do you see for children on social media?
- When should a company accept a regulator’s decision?
Vocabulary
- watchdog
- an official body that monitors whether laws and rules are followed
- enforce
- to make sure a rule is obeyed using checks or penalties
- underage
- younger than the legal or permitted age for something
- consent
- permission given by someone for something to happen
- algorithm
- a set of rules a computer uses to make decisions or show content
- harmful
- likely to cause damage or negative effects
- investigation
- an official process to discover the facts about a case
- bypass
- to avoid or get around a rule or system
Reading
TikTok will pay a £12.7m penalty to the UK’s data watchdog after dropping its appeal over child-safety breaches. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined the video app in 2023 for failing to enforce its minimum age of 13 and for weak checks that let underage users stay on the platform. The ICO said as many as 1.75 million UK children under 13 used TikTok in 2020. It also found that the company did not give clear information on data use or obtain parental consent.
Not until it dropped its appeal did the fine become final. Only after 2020 did TikTok expand tools to detect and remove accounts that should not be there, it says. The service has more than 30 million users in the UK.
TikTok has also withdrawn an appeal against an ICO request for details on how its algorithm handles teenagers’ personal data and serves potentially harmful content. The ICO will now resume its investigation. Ofcom says more action is needed as the UK’s under-16 access limit for social media comes into force next year. In Australia, where an under-16 ban began last December, officials report that a substantial proportion of young users kept accounts or learned to bypass age-gating systems.
Comprehension
- Who fined TikTok and for how much?
- What age limit did TikTok fail to enforce?
- When did TikTok expand tools to detect underage accounts?
- What will the ICO examine about TikTok’s system?
- What point is made using Australia’s experience?
Grammar focus
Adding emphasis - inversion with negative adverbials
When a negative or limiting adverbial is put at the front for emphasis, English uses inversion: the auxiliary comes before the subject. Use forms like “Not until... did...”, “Never have...”, “Rarely do...”. (Examples constructed.)
- Not until TikTok dropped its appeal did the fine become final.
- Never have regulators seen so many under-13 accounts in one case.
Grammar exercise
Circle the correct option in each sentence.
- Rarely (do platforms / platforms do) enforce age checks.
- Only after evidence (the ICO did / did the ICO) resume investigating.
- Never before (have companies / companies have) faced such fines.
- Hardly ever (parents do / do parents) give clear consent.
- Seldom (did platforms / platforms did) detect underage accounts then.
Discussion
- Should platforms verify age with ID, and why or why not?
- How transparent should algorithms for teens’ feeds be?
- Who is most responsible for child safety online?
- Are bans effective, or do they push problems elsewhere?
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